Gartner: Windows 7 “should do a lot better” than Vista

Gartner thinks that Windows 7 will fare better than Windows Vista, but it …

With the positive reaction to the Windows 7 beta coming from various places in the media, many have started to wonder how well Windows 7 will fare once it ships. While it's still too early to know for sure, certain well-known groups have already made a point to voice their opinion about what will happen next. For example, a while back, I asked Michael Silver, Research VP of Gartner, how he expected to Windows 7 to perform compared to Windows Vista in both the consumer and business markets.

"It should do a lot better," he told Ars. "Vista has such a bad reputation that it would be hard for Windows 7 not to do better, though Vista’s reputation is a lot worse than the product. Vista adoption is especially low in business—ISVs will eventually look to reduce or drop support for new applications on Windows XP and that will help push organizations to Windows 7 more quickly. Still it will take organizations 12-18 months from the time Windows 7 ships until they are ready to deploy it in large numbers, meaning broad adoption for enterprise begins in 1H11."

Two weeks ago, Silver released a report titled Windows 7 Won't Need SP1, but Will Still Need 12 to 18 Months Before Deployment Begins in which he dived deeper into what business users should expect. The most interesting conclusion he came to was "Don't use SP1 as a milestone to deploy a new version of Windows, but plan to deploy SP1 as part of the initial deployment," an obvious attempt to destroy the rule of thumb of "wait till SP1 for any new release of Windows." That would have made Microsoft happy, but Silver still recommends waiting at least a year. Expect Redmond to be giving a completely different recommendation to businesses in the coming months.